Spells for Forgetting(17)

“How are you, Zach?”

He started with the file again, scraping it down the blade at an angle. “Got no complaints.”

“You look good.”

He finally set the file down and shifted on the stool. His thick white eyebrows turned up on the ends roughly as he looked at me. His gaze studied the line of my shoulders. The shape of my face. The last time I’d seen him, I was a kid.

His bottom lip stuck out, but he didn’t say whatever he was thinking.

“Jake says you’re still the caretaker over at the cemetery,” I said.

He nodded once, leaning into the table as if his back hurt.

“What do I need to do to…”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said, cutting me off.

So he knew. Hell, the whole town probably knew by now. But I couldn’t hear any hint in his voice of whether the news about my mom meant anything to him. Maybe she’d already been dead to him a long time.

“I’ll have it done in a few days.” He grunted.

I waited for him to say something else. Anything. There was always a storm in his dark blue eyes.

I pulled my phone from my back pocket. “Let me give you my number and you can—”

“I don’t need it.”

There probably wasn’t even a phone line installed in the house, I realized. And that wasn’t how people did things here.

A drop of rain hit my jacket and I looked up to the treetops, where the gray had returned to the sky. By the time my gaze fell on him again, Zachariah was already turned back around on his stool, file in hand.

“Well, thanks.”

I waited another moment before I backed out of the shed, my hand gripped more tightly on the phone than was necessary. I’d been well versed in the cold shoulder before I left, but after living in the outside world for so many years, the sting of it felt fresh.

Anywhere but Saoirse, I was just a normal person, but I’d never been normal here. Not even before Lily. I’d always been the heir to the orchard. Henry’s grandson. The last Salt.

Bernard Keller was waiting at the end of the driveway when I got back to the cottage. He was parked on the shoulder of the road, standing on the other side of the gate, like he was afraid to open it. If I had to guess, I’d say the superstitions of the town had kept anyone from venturing too close to the cottage since I left.

When he saw me, he went rigid, shoulders straightening under the jacket he wore. It was at least a size and a half too small and his auburn hair was blown over his forehead.

The buttons of his shirt pulled as he inhaled a tight breath. “August,” he said, in a poor attempt at a greeting. My name was hollow in his mouth.

“Hi, Mr. Keller.”

I didn’t know what else to call him. All of my interactions with Bernard had been in my grandfather’s office when he handled legal matters for the orchard. He was the only attorney on the island and he’d been commissioned by the town council to step in when my grandfather came down sick one summer and refused to see a doctor.

The job mostly consisted of Bernard badgering him to deal with things that he’d let lapse or ignored altogether, like a kind of net under the business that would catch the town if my grandfather died. Most people had been sure that he would. But I hadn’t been that lucky. By summer’s end, the illness had gone, and we were stuck with him.

“Jake said you need someone to deal with some property matters?” Bernard hooked one thumb into his belt, tapping a fence post with the other hand.

“Yeah.” My brow pulled as I studied him. He was fidgety. Nervous, even. “I’m only here for a few days, but I’m planning to sell the cottage. Can you handle it?”

“Sure,” he answered, a little too loudly. “I can do that.”

“Good. I’ll get you the paperwork and keys before I head back to the city.”

“No problem. Just drop them at the office with Claudia and she’ll see to it.”

I stared at him, eyeing the red glow of his skin. There were a few beads of sweat at his temple despite the cold. He looked like he was about to piss himself.

“If that’s all, I’ll be going then.” He let go of the fence.

I watched as he fumbled with the keys and walked back to the car. Once the engine was started, he reached into his jacket and pulled a handkerchief free. He swiped it across his brow before hitting the gas more heavily than he’d meant to, and the back tires spun in the mud, sending a spray of it behind him as he pulled out.

A single bolt of lightning flashed over the treetops and I looked up, watching it spiderweb across the sky like the tangled roots of a tree. The electricity of it was buzzing in the air, and it rose sharply as my eyes fell to the other side of the road.

Everything stopped when I saw her. The biting cold crept over my skin and the woods fell silent, snuffing out the sound of the wind racing through the trees.

Across the road, Emery Blackwood stood beside the truck in the gravel drive, a set of keys clutched in one hand. Her breath fogged in the air, her chest rising and falling beneath the waxed canvas jacket.

Every muscle in my body tightened, holding me in place, and I swallowed against the painful lump rising in my throat. I’d spent countless minutes of my life imagining this exact moment. I’d played it over and over in my mind, painting the image of her from every memory. But now that I was standing there, no more than thirty steps from the person who’d haunted me for the last fourteen years, I had no idea what to do.